After months of the permanent campaigning, did the first formal week of the election fight move the needle?.No knockouts yet, but this judge says Smith is winning on points.. Notley blocks Staples from media listAlberta NDP leader Rachel Notley (L). .“Campaigns are a big deal” says professor Tom Flanagan in his 2014 book Winning Power — Canadian Campaigning in the 21st Century. Not only are they major events involving thousands of individuals, but they determine the machinery of government for several years, and dominate the news media for weeks before and after. Albertans generally pay great attention to exercising their democratic rights..This election will be no exception. If the 2015 election with a 40% NDP win can be called the “Orange Crush” then the 2019, (55% - UCP, 32% - NDP) win also deserves some sort of hyperbolic adjective. The best I can come up with is “Blue Tornado.” I know it’s a bit lame, but the UCP annihilated Rachel Notley’s NDP, leaving her with just her union power base in Edmonton..The 2019 election proved to have the highest participation rate (67.5%) of any Alberta election since 1982. Voters increased by nearly 420,000 and the more than a million votes cast for the UCP was more than the entire voting population in 2008 just 11 years prior. You can’t say Albertans aren't politically engaged..Rachel Notley’s NDP managed to hang on to its base and even added about 15,000 votes, but that’s only 3.75% of the new voters. The Liberals were wiped out, probably never to return..Make no mistake, the reason for the NDP loss was four bad years of abysmal NDP policies that Albertans judged harshly at the ballot box..Will Notley’s four bad years and the 2019 Blue Tornado factor into the current election? Undoubtedly, since elections are not fashion statements, but reflect fundamental beliefs and values..Just to refresh your memory, here are some highlights of the four bad years..An early NDP mistake was to assume the agricultural sector needed stronger employment legislation to protect its workers. The idea that children helping with farm duties needed legislation to protect them from their parents seemed at best absurd, and at worst completely out of touch. That friends helping friends with planting or harvesting needed protection from one another again showed a remarkable blindness to the realities of farming life. Those policies were weakened from their original design, but the damage to the NDP brand in the agricultural community was permanent..Notley’s insistence on a dramatic increase to the minimum wage also showed a lack of understanding how labour markets work and would ultimately reduce employment and deny access to thousands of new workers to entry level jobs. At the same time the emerging opiate crisis seemed to be disproportionately affecting the very demographic that was denied employment opportunities by the minimum wage legislation..But perhaps her biggest folly was to mess with the energy industry, most of whose operational workers are employed in rural Alberta..First there was her royalty review, at a time when the industry was suffering some of the lowest energy prices in memory. However, the 'Big Bad Bitumen Billionaires' narrative is a perennial favourite on the left and got lots of headlines for an extended period. In the end she probably should have lowered royalties to support declining drilling levels. She decided instead to give a break to the industry by leaving royalties alone. With today’s record oil profits she will most certainly increase royalties to cheers of oil-haters all across the province..Second, her Climate Leadership Plan. The idea was to buy 'social licence' from Quebecers to allow Alberta to build export pipelines to tidewater. What could possibly go wrong? But the policies also affected everyday Albertans and introduced real costs to taxpayers through the new carbon (dioxide) tax. The policy failed miserably with the B.C. government extorting unconstitutional 'royalty payments' to allow oil to be transported through the Trans Mountain Pipeline. Not to be outdone, the federal Liberals passed their — also unconstitutional — Bill C-69, the “No More Pipelines” Act..However messing with the electricity system and undoing a 20-year project to deregulate the production of electricity in Alberta was seen to go beyond incompetence to downright malevolence. The cancelling of the infamous PPA contracts cost taxpayers billions of dollars. The premature shut down of coal-fired generators before their mandated shut-down dates or requirements for CO2 scrubbers essentially removed a free source of energy in coal. This helped gas producers, but only at an increased cost of electricity for consumers. .The expansion of subsidized electrical panels and windmills for electricity ignored the additional cost of providing a reliable base load and peak load capability. It also added the costs of building additional transmission lines in order to connect these new generating sources into the grid.Now the NDP supports the federal Liberal plan to get rid of gas for electricity generation by 2035. Your power bills are going to go up and gas royalties will go down. Seems like a good plan. David Staples did an excellent review of this current policy disagreement for the Edmonton Journal..Finally, the purchase of rail cars for the export of Alberta’s oil was unwise as rail transport has much higher costs and higher environmental risks than pipeline transportation. Further, it takes away any compelling reason to expand pipeline capability. If you can send it by government train why do you need a pipeline? If oil producers need rail transport they can contract for it themselves. This does not need to be a service provided by government..So the real question is: Have Albertans forgotten about this? Are the Blue Tornado voters still in the province? Or will they accept the “stable, competent” NDP messaging? Stable is good of course, but stable, competent malevolence is less so..To hear the commentators and pollsters, it's as if the Blue Tornado never happened. Nope, it is all about leader perception and who looks better in blue jeans..But seriously, every day we here the same thing. “This is the closest race ever, a virtual tie and everything depends upon Calgary.” If we dig into the numbers and look at the implications for this narrative, will we find it supported by the analysis?.What would it take to get from the 2019 Blue Tornado to a virtual tie on May 29?.A huge defection. Nearly 210,000 voters would need to move from the UCP to the NDP. That's half of the new voters from 2019 and 20% of the UCP support. Moreover, it would represent a nearly 35% increase in NDP support. Current voters are angry for sure, but are they angry enough to make these sorts of tectonic shifts?.UCP voters would have to suffer some sort of mass amnesia concerning the four bad years and at the same time be infected with substantive discontent for all things UCP..Did the UCP face an existential threat because of COVID? Yeah, but they dealt with it through an open, sometimes bitter, but ultimately cleansing leadership review..Do 20% of the UCP’s base really believe more lockdowns, more mask mandates, more church closings, and more extra time for children away from school would have been better policy?.Do 20% really want Deena Hinshaw back? Do they think Rachel Notley will hire her back? I think everyone just wants to move on. Smith and the UCP got this message..But let’s suppose that the massive voting shift takes place. What would happen to the distribution of seats?.Well, increasing the NDP vote in Edmonton would maybe add one seat. Reducing UCP votes in rural Alberta would likely add no additional NDP seats. So if the transfer votes are more or less uniform across all regions, what does this mean for Calgary?.The increase in votes in Calgary from 2015 to 2019 was about 102,000 which is proportional to the 25% of Alberta seats there. The UCP had a 106,000 vote advantage or 18%. The vote shift to get to a tie in Calgary is about 53,000. If we assume a more or less equal distribution of those votes across all 26 ridings, how would the seat total change? Turns out that only four additional seats would be won by the NDP: Currie, Falconridge, Klein, and Varsity..If there was a proportional decease in UCP, they would still hold 13 seats — enough for a UCP victory..This admittedly very rough analysis shows just how hard it will be for the NDP to make up ground even if there is a massive shift in voting. The shift in Calgary cannot just be a tie, there has to be significant NDP gains..But doesn’t that mean the polls, if not misleading, are just plain wrong?.Well, it turns out polling before the 2012 and 2019 election also turned out to be very wrong..Polls are important, but not predictive. I will be looking at polling in more detail and election predictions in my update next week..In the meantime here are the high points of the campaign in the first week..Calgary Arena Deal: Smith rocked the city with this announcement. The Calgary Herald spent the next week trying to convince voters it won’t make a difference in the election. In the meantime a new Global Ipsos poll revealed the UCP was up four percentage points. The poll result was not reported in the Herald..UCP Tax Reduction: This is one billion dollars being given back to Albertans with the most proportional effect on low income earners. If these people hear about it they may vote accordingly. Smith’s line “We are giving your money back to you,” may resonate with voters..Election Strategy: Looks like the UCP is planning to wow us with policy, having popular and trusted cabinet ministers like Brian Jean and Rebecca Schultz making announcements. The NDP appears to have gone all in on demonizing Smith. Some of the big campaign signs have her juxtaposed with a weather vane. Maybe too cute by half. The negative narrative may run out of steam, particularly when more and more voters actually listen to what Smith is saying. The televised debates can only help her..The “hidden agenda” thing just won’t fly. Her personal political preferences have never been hidden. Whether these then become the rule for UCP policy going forward is to give her a bit too much sway in caucus and cabinet. Most people know the difference between political philosophy and political policy. The Herald's Don Braid will continue to hammer this narrative no doubt, trying to save the biggest ‘scandal’ till the last week of the campaign. Can’t wait to see his columns on May 23 and 27. I hope the Herald takes a formal editorial position in favour of the NDP and explains its reasoning to Calgarians..NDP Health Care Plan: The announcement didn’t generate much analysis from commentators except from Calgary writer Rahim Mohamed. He points out the new NDP approach has already been tried and failed in Ontario. However, his National Post column didn’t run in the Herald, not even in the website version..Artur Pawlowski conviction: The timing of this news had to be a blessing for Smith. In three more weeks it will be old, forgotten news. It will no doubt come up in the televised debate so it will be interesting to see how Smith handles the allegation of “cavorting with extremists.”.Media Relations: Smith continues to refuse multiple questions from a single reporter. But other reporters have just been continuing on the same topic. Notley continues to deny the Western Standard any questions at all. Chris Selley’s excellent National Post column on the CBC’s vote influencer “Vote Compass” also did not make it into the Herald, again not even in the website edition..Meanwhile, the UCP Youtube video mocking Rachel Notley’s stand against the Western Standard has hit nearly half a million views. The demographic viewing this video may prove to be a pivotal force if they get out and vote..Employment policy: Enhancement of Alberta is Calling program was a smart reference to an already well known policy. To add incentives in sectors with a labour shortage is good targeting. Fast tracking approvals of credentials for out-of-province doctors and nurses will go a long way to eliminate barriers for those professions..Net-Zero electricity grid by 2035: It was probably a mistake to talk about something so complicated as cost-benefit analysis in a general election. Only economic policy nerds like me even want to understand this stuff. It certainly didn’t help for the UCP’s own consultant (not likely to get any future work) who threw them under the bus by saying the net benefit was only a negative $35 billion. As if only $35 billion in the hole means it is a good policy..Late-breaking poll from Leger shows provincial support for NDP declining compared to the previous two Leger polls. UCP has a 10 point lead in Calgary. Advantage Smith..All in all, no knockdowns, but I would say Smith won the first week on points..William D. Marriott is a retired economist who specialized in policy analysis of the oil and gas industry.
After months of the permanent campaigning, did the first formal week of the election fight move the needle?.No knockouts yet, but this judge says Smith is winning on points.. Notley blocks Staples from media listAlberta NDP leader Rachel Notley (L). .“Campaigns are a big deal” says professor Tom Flanagan in his 2014 book Winning Power — Canadian Campaigning in the 21st Century. Not only are they major events involving thousands of individuals, but they determine the machinery of government for several years, and dominate the news media for weeks before and after. Albertans generally pay great attention to exercising their democratic rights..This election will be no exception. If the 2015 election with a 40% NDP win can be called the “Orange Crush” then the 2019, (55% - UCP, 32% - NDP) win also deserves some sort of hyperbolic adjective. The best I can come up with is “Blue Tornado.” I know it’s a bit lame, but the UCP annihilated Rachel Notley’s NDP, leaving her with just her union power base in Edmonton..The 2019 election proved to have the highest participation rate (67.5%) of any Alberta election since 1982. Voters increased by nearly 420,000 and the more than a million votes cast for the UCP was more than the entire voting population in 2008 just 11 years prior. You can’t say Albertans aren't politically engaged..Rachel Notley’s NDP managed to hang on to its base and even added about 15,000 votes, but that’s only 3.75% of the new voters. The Liberals were wiped out, probably never to return..Make no mistake, the reason for the NDP loss was four bad years of abysmal NDP policies that Albertans judged harshly at the ballot box..Will Notley’s four bad years and the 2019 Blue Tornado factor into the current election? Undoubtedly, since elections are not fashion statements, but reflect fundamental beliefs and values..Just to refresh your memory, here are some highlights of the four bad years..An early NDP mistake was to assume the agricultural sector needed stronger employment legislation to protect its workers. The idea that children helping with farm duties needed legislation to protect them from their parents seemed at best absurd, and at worst completely out of touch. That friends helping friends with planting or harvesting needed protection from one another again showed a remarkable blindness to the realities of farming life. Those policies were weakened from their original design, but the damage to the NDP brand in the agricultural community was permanent..Notley’s insistence on a dramatic increase to the minimum wage also showed a lack of understanding how labour markets work and would ultimately reduce employment and deny access to thousands of new workers to entry level jobs. At the same time the emerging opiate crisis seemed to be disproportionately affecting the very demographic that was denied employment opportunities by the minimum wage legislation..But perhaps her biggest folly was to mess with the energy industry, most of whose operational workers are employed in rural Alberta..First there was her royalty review, at a time when the industry was suffering some of the lowest energy prices in memory. However, the 'Big Bad Bitumen Billionaires' narrative is a perennial favourite on the left and got lots of headlines for an extended period. In the end she probably should have lowered royalties to support declining drilling levels. She decided instead to give a break to the industry by leaving royalties alone. With today’s record oil profits she will most certainly increase royalties to cheers of oil-haters all across the province..Second, her Climate Leadership Plan. The idea was to buy 'social licence' from Quebecers to allow Alberta to build export pipelines to tidewater. What could possibly go wrong? But the policies also affected everyday Albertans and introduced real costs to taxpayers through the new carbon (dioxide) tax. The policy failed miserably with the B.C. government extorting unconstitutional 'royalty payments' to allow oil to be transported through the Trans Mountain Pipeline. Not to be outdone, the federal Liberals passed their — also unconstitutional — Bill C-69, the “No More Pipelines” Act..However messing with the electricity system and undoing a 20-year project to deregulate the production of electricity in Alberta was seen to go beyond incompetence to downright malevolence. The cancelling of the infamous PPA contracts cost taxpayers billions of dollars. The premature shut down of coal-fired generators before their mandated shut-down dates or requirements for CO2 scrubbers essentially removed a free source of energy in coal. This helped gas producers, but only at an increased cost of electricity for consumers. .The expansion of subsidized electrical panels and windmills for electricity ignored the additional cost of providing a reliable base load and peak load capability. It also added the costs of building additional transmission lines in order to connect these new generating sources into the grid.Now the NDP supports the federal Liberal plan to get rid of gas for electricity generation by 2035. Your power bills are going to go up and gas royalties will go down. Seems like a good plan. David Staples did an excellent review of this current policy disagreement for the Edmonton Journal..Finally, the purchase of rail cars for the export of Alberta’s oil was unwise as rail transport has much higher costs and higher environmental risks than pipeline transportation. Further, it takes away any compelling reason to expand pipeline capability. If you can send it by government train why do you need a pipeline? If oil producers need rail transport they can contract for it themselves. This does not need to be a service provided by government..So the real question is: Have Albertans forgotten about this? Are the Blue Tornado voters still in the province? Or will they accept the “stable, competent” NDP messaging? Stable is good of course, but stable, competent malevolence is less so..To hear the commentators and pollsters, it's as if the Blue Tornado never happened. Nope, it is all about leader perception and who looks better in blue jeans..But seriously, every day we here the same thing. “This is the closest race ever, a virtual tie and everything depends upon Calgary.” If we dig into the numbers and look at the implications for this narrative, will we find it supported by the analysis?.What would it take to get from the 2019 Blue Tornado to a virtual tie on May 29?.A huge defection. Nearly 210,000 voters would need to move from the UCP to the NDP. That's half of the new voters from 2019 and 20% of the UCP support. Moreover, it would represent a nearly 35% increase in NDP support. Current voters are angry for sure, but are they angry enough to make these sorts of tectonic shifts?.UCP voters would have to suffer some sort of mass amnesia concerning the four bad years and at the same time be infected with substantive discontent for all things UCP..Did the UCP face an existential threat because of COVID? Yeah, but they dealt with it through an open, sometimes bitter, but ultimately cleansing leadership review..Do 20% of the UCP’s base really believe more lockdowns, more mask mandates, more church closings, and more extra time for children away from school would have been better policy?.Do 20% really want Deena Hinshaw back? Do they think Rachel Notley will hire her back? I think everyone just wants to move on. Smith and the UCP got this message..But let’s suppose that the massive voting shift takes place. What would happen to the distribution of seats?.Well, increasing the NDP vote in Edmonton would maybe add one seat. Reducing UCP votes in rural Alberta would likely add no additional NDP seats. So if the transfer votes are more or less uniform across all regions, what does this mean for Calgary?.The increase in votes in Calgary from 2015 to 2019 was about 102,000 which is proportional to the 25% of Alberta seats there. The UCP had a 106,000 vote advantage or 18%. The vote shift to get to a tie in Calgary is about 53,000. If we assume a more or less equal distribution of those votes across all 26 ridings, how would the seat total change? Turns out that only four additional seats would be won by the NDP: Currie, Falconridge, Klein, and Varsity..If there was a proportional decease in UCP, they would still hold 13 seats — enough for a UCP victory..This admittedly very rough analysis shows just how hard it will be for the NDP to make up ground even if there is a massive shift in voting. The shift in Calgary cannot just be a tie, there has to be significant NDP gains..But doesn’t that mean the polls, if not misleading, are just plain wrong?.Well, it turns out polling before the 2012 and 2019 election also turned out to be very wrong..Polls are important, but not predictive. I will be looking at polling in more detail and election predictions in my update next week..In the meantime here are the high points of the campaign in the first week..Calgary Arena Deal: Smith rocked the city with this announcement. The Calgary Herald spent the next week trying to convince voters it won’t make a difference in the election. In the meantime a new Global Ipsos poll revealed the UCP was up four percentage points. The poll result was not reported in the Herald..UCP Tax Reduction: This is one billion dollars being given back to Albertans with the most proportional effect on low income earners. If these people hear about it they may vote accordingly. Smith’s line “We are giving your money back to you,” may resonate with voters..Election Strategy: Looks like the UCP is planning to wow us with policy, having popular and trusted cabinet ministers like Brian Jean and Rebecca Schultz making announcements. The NDP appears to have gone all in on demonizing Smith. Some of the big campaign signs have her juxtaposed with a weather vane. Maybe too cute by half. The negative narrative may run out of steam, particularly when more and more voters actually listen to what Smith is saying. The televised debates can only help her..The “hidden agenda” thing just won’t fly. Her personal political preferences have never been hidden. Whether these then become the rule for UCP policy going forward is to give her a bit too much sway in caucus and cabinet. Most people know the difference between political philosophy and political policy. The Herald's Don Braid will continue to hammer this narrative no doubt, trying to save the biggest ‘scandal’ till the last week of the campaign. Can’t wait to see his columns on May 23 and 27. I hope the Herald takes a formal editorial position in favour of the NDP and explains its reasoning to Calgarians..NDP Health Care Plan: The announcement didn’t generate much analysis from commentators except from Calgary writer Rahim Mohamed. He points out the new NDP approach has already been tried and failed in Ontario. However, his National Post column didn’t run in the Herald, not even in the website version..Artur Pawlowski conviction: The timing of this news had to be a blessing for Smith. In three more weeks it will be old, forgotten news. It will no doubt come up in the televised debate so it will be interesting to see how Smith handles the allegation of “cavorting with extremists.”.Media Relations: Smith continues to refuse multiple questions from a single reporter. But other reporters have just been continuing on the same topic. Notley continues to deny the Western Standard any questions at all. Chris Selley’s excellent National Post column on the CBC’s vote influencer “Vote Compass” also did not make it into the Herald, again not even in the website edition..Meanwhile, the UCP Youtube video mocking Rachel Notley’s stand against the Western Standard has hit nearly half a million views. The demographic viewing this video may prove to be a pivotal force if they get out and vote..Employment policy: Enhancement of Alberta is Calling program was a smart reference to an already well known policy. To add incentives in sectors with a labour shortage is good targeting. Fast tracking approvals of credentials for out-of-province doctors and nurses will go a long way to eliminate barriers for those professions..Net-Zero electricity grid by 2035: It was probably a mistake to talk about something so complicated as cost-benefit analysis in a general election. Only economic policy nerds like me even want to understand this stuff. It certainly didn’t help for the UCP’s own consultant (not likely to get any future work) who threw them under the bus by saying the net benefit was only a negative $35 billion. As if only $35 billion in the hole means it is a good policy..Late-breaking poll from Leger shows provincial support for NDP declining compared to the previous two Leger polls. UCP has a 10 point lead in Calgary. Advantage Smith..All in all, no knockdowns, but I would say Smith won the first week on points..William D. Marriott is a retired economist who specialized in policy analysis of the oil and gas industry.
